


all i've done

by dropofrum (95echelon)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Blanket Permission, But mostly fluff, F/M, Hurts So Good, Idiots in Love, Podfic Available, So much angst, seven bless the wolf pack, slightly cracky, stark family feelz, the sheer level of crack oh my god
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-24 15:35:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12015768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/95echelon/pseuds/dropofrum
Summary: After the Great War, Jon Snow abdicates the Iron Throne. He comes home to Winterfell. To her.





	1. sansa

#### "I'm tired of fighting. It's all I've done, since I left home."

\- Jon Snow, to Sansa Stark

* * *

"You're not supposed to be here."

He looks weary. There's travel dust on his clothes, and snow in his dark hair; steam rises off his stallion from a hard, long ride, but Jon is looking at her, just looking at her. His face is still, but there's a smile in his eyes. 

"You shouldn't be here," she repeats, her spine proud and erect, her chin high, her hands clasped demurely behind her back. She looks like a Stark, she knows, not in face maybe, but in bearing, even if she sounds like an addled raven destined for the maester's axe. 

But it's the least damning thing to say to him, that he shouldn't be here, that he doesn't belong; it's much less terrible than what she truly wants to say. 

_Go back to your dragon queen,_ she wants to rage at him. _Send me another raven when you marry, father an heir and die. Go back! **Go to her! GO!**_

His hand moves to his hip, carelessly unbuckling the sword belt that hangs there, letting it crash to the snow-covered ground, as he walks to her, never looking away, eyes dark and soft and achingly familiar. 

She takes a deep, steadying breath, nostrils flaring as her nails dig into her palms behind her back. Jon Snow will _never_ see her hurt. _Never_ , by the old gods and the new, he will _never_ see her weak. 

When they are an inch apart, he stops, and their breath puff in little white clouds, mingling in the cold, wintry air. 

"I know," he says, his voice like gravel and whiskey, smooth and low, and heat pools in her stomach. _Targaryen_ , she tries to remind herself, looking at him, as memories of Father rise with a vengeance in her mind's eye. _He's a Targaryen._

"I know," he repeats, as if he’s answering the poisonous thoughts swirling in her mind, and his hand comes up to tuck a long, curling strand of her hair behind her ear. He traces the outer curve of her ear, fingers grazing the soft skin behind, the sharp line of her jaw, before dropping away. The tension between them crackles painfully, and Sansa can feel blood rushing to her cheeks. "But I wanted to come home," he confesses. 

And there's nothing she can say to that. 

* * *


	2. arya

 

"What does your dragon queen say of this? Of your coming back?"

Arya stares at him steadily as she asks the question, no emotion betrayed in her features. She's lounging in the furs in front of the hearth in her room, Ghost curled over her knees. The blacksmith is with her too, a goblet of wine dangling between his fingers, sitting next to her, an enormous, bare arm curled possessively around her shoulders. 

"She isn't _my_ dragon queen," Jon repeats, for what seems like the thousandth time today. He has repeated it to Lord Umber, who's visiting the keep with his boys, to Sam, who serves as Maester, to Gilly, who looked up at him sullenly, informing him he was a daft, bird-brained idiot for leaving Sansa behind, and that even _Wun Wun_ had had more sense in his right thumb that Jon Snow did in his whole, idiot body, before going back to feeding her new twins.

" _You_ crawled into Daenerys' bed," Arya retorts, rubbing Ghost behind his ears. " _You_ bent the knee. _You_ gave her Winterfell."

"I took it back too," Jon grits out. Of everyone, he'd thought at least Arya would have stood by him - Arya, who knows what his life had been before, what he had endured as a bastard, an unwanted child, a living stain on Ned Stark's honour.

Arya snorts. "Please, brother dear," she drawls, and a frisson of warmth chased down Jon's spine, despite her tone. Whatever else has happened, she still calls him brother. _Maybe there's still some hope._

"You didn't take Winterfell back," she says, cuttingly, and Jon watches Gendry Waters’ - Gendry  _Baratheon_ , now, he's been legitimized a bloody _Baratheon_  - thumb make a slow, deliberate pass against the shallow dip of Arya's spine, where her tunic has ridden up, where he likely thinks his actions are camouflaged by shadow. Jon's hand curls into a fist. 

Arya nestles back against Gendry, and for a brief moment, her eyes close, a quiet satisfaction drifting across her small, fine features. Beside her, Gendry’s blue eyes crinkle up in a fond smile. And Jon forces himself to relax. 

_Fine_ , if he makes her this happy- Gods help them all, but _fine_. The boy doesn't _have_ to die. 

" _We_ took it back,” Arya says, long moments later. " _Sansa_ took Winterfell back."

She looks up at him, sad and bleak, a little nostalgic.  
"Why do you think the Lords of the North named her our Queen?"

* * *


	3. bran

“Daenerys doesn't care to rule the North. Six kingdoms are sufficient room even for a Targaryen."

"Is _that_ what she told you?" Bran asks blandly. 

Jon frowns at him. He’d thought that was the truth. He’d thought the vast, empty expanses of the North held little appeal for a girl who’d grown in the lush, summer cities of Essos. That she would be home in the sweaty, crowded bustle of King’s Landing, the verdant rolling plains of Highgarden. He’d thought she’d never want to return to the place where she lost her child to the enemy, where she nearly did lose her other two.

"Did Daenerys lie to me?" 

Bran looks at him, patiently. There's so much sadness in his eyes now, the shadow of such terrible things. "She doesn't care about the North," Bran says finally. "But you... You are the only family she has. And you don't love her. She let you go, Jon, because she does love you, in the only way she knows how. But you know better than anyone, Jon. A Targaryen, alone in the world, is a terrible thing."

Jon remembers another crippled man, from another lifetime ago, his eyes white, his hands weak, his limbs trembling with age, saying those words to Samwell Tarly, in a cold, empty room in Castle Black. He shivers, and says nothing in return. 

_How do you reply to the truth?_

* * *

"Do you hate me?"

Sansa laughs, the black unhappiness of it echoing through her bedchamber. Winterfell's ledgers are spread across her writing table, and a candle gutters beside her. Her eyes hurt. "What, for leaving? You've left before, Jon. You left gor Dragonstone, and then you left for Eastwatch, and then you left for the capital."

_I came back,_ he wants to tell her. _Every goddamn time, Sansa, I came back home. I came back to you._

"I don't _‘hate'_ you," she continues, in that bland, measured pace Jon thinks she must've learned from Baelish. "That would require more effort than I care to expend on _you,_ Jon Snow.” She pauses, considering. "Or is it Targaryen, now?"

She watches his jaw clench briefly from the corner of her eye, throwing the sharp lines of his face in stark, beautiful relief. "No," he grits out. "It's Snow. It'll always be Snow."

"You're a prince, though. You ought to have a prince's name."

Jon smiles at her, a feral little flash of a smile, that sets her heart thundering. "I do," he admits, and the smile never reaches his eyes now. "My mother, your aunt... Before she died, she named me Aegon Targaryen."

_Aegon- **Aegon?!**_

"Prince Aegon Targaryen..." Sansa mumbles at the fire, testing the name and wrinkling her nose. 

"No," he laughs quietly, leaning against her bedpost, arms folded over his broad chest. He’s dressed in Stark colours - a loose, pale cambric shirt left open at the throat, and grey breeches tucked into high riding boots. He wears his hair like he used to when they were younger, tousled and dark, curling over his forehead like he’s been running his hands through the dark locks. There’s a new lightness to the way he holds himself now, tall and proud, unburdened. He looks, for all the world, like he belongs here.

With her.

She hastily locks the feeling away, fingers tightening so painfully, her quill threatens to snap under the strain.

“It’s a terrible name,” he admits, laughter crinkling up his eyes. He shrugs, and the shirt pulls tightly across his broad shoulders, just for a moment, the neck widening to reveal smooth, sun-browned skin, the dark hollow of a clavicle, the shadowy dip at the bottom of his throat. Sansa wonders, absently, how the skin there would feel under her fingertips, under her tongue. She wonders how he'd taste.

"Your father named me Jon Snow," he says quietly, meeting her eyes, and something in the vicinity of her heart  _hurts_ , when he adds, in his dark, midnight voice, "It's the only name I'll ever need."

She feels the muted crack of her quill between her fingers, and she thinks,  _Do you need me? Will you **ever** need me?   
_ But she says nothing at all.


	4. jaime

"You should've never left."

"No," Jon agrees, warily watching the former Kingsguard run a whetstone down his Valyrian sword. It used to be half of Ice, he knows. Half of Lord Stark's sword. Jaime had come North, after the kingsmeet at the capital, abandoning his home and his lover, and he had sworn the same vow Brienne had, to the Stark sisters, fighting beside Arya and the Maiden Knight at the fall of Eastwatch. He'd named his sword Wolf's Claw. 

"You left, though," Jon points out. 

Jaime arches a golden brow at him. "I left _Cersei_ ," he points out, a sardonic twist to his words. " _You_ left **_Sansa_**. There is a considerable difference between the two, your Grace."

"You loved her, though," Jon says. “You loved your sister. Why come here?"

Jaime sighs, shoulders slumping, running a finger down the Claw's razor edge, blood rising from his skin that he barely notices. "I stopped loving Cersei a long time ago. I stayed because she was... She was all I knew. And when you love someone so well, for so long… They become a part of you, a part of your person. Without her by my side, I didn’t know who I was. Who I could be."

He falls silent, brow furrowed, the cords of his neck straining up. 

"Why come here?" Jon asks him again. 

"I thought I could find something to love here," Jaime admits, eyes glinting, his voice so soft that Jon nearly misses his reply. “I thought I could become someone worth loving."

"Did you?" Jon asks, more for himself than for Jaime.

He smiles. "Yes," he replies. Jon follows the knight's gaze to the training yard, where Brienne and Podrick are training, in tunics and breeches, armor cast aside for the day. Her face shines with exertion, and there is a strength to her movement, a sharp, powerful fluidity that Jon doesn't think he's seen often before.

_Oh_ , Jon thinks, looking at Jaime's soft, slightly besotted gaze, hiding a smile. _Well, then._

* * *

“She just let you leave? Just like that?"

Jon arched a brow at Sansa. She never took that well, he knew, she always looked away for a half-second before regaining her icy, cold composure.

He loved rattling her. _Gods_ , he thought, looking at her watch him impassively, even with pink staining her cheeks. He could happily spend the rest of his life getting perfect, lovely Sansa Stark to blush.

“What did you think she’d do?” Jon asks, curiously, biting into a fresh, sweet Highgarden apple. 

“Well,” Sansa drawls, nibbling at a teacake. The faint light of a setting sun streams in from the west, making her pale skin glow, setting off her hair like fire. Winter is coming to an end, quicker than anyone could have expected. “She does seem to have a certain proclivity for setting people on fire. And she’s still got two of her great, bloody beasts."

“Ah, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Jon defers nervously, just as the door to Sansa’s solar crashes open, and a chambermaid crashes in, red-faced and gasping. 

“Dragon!” she cries, blubbering and wet-faced, pointing roughly in the direction of Winterfell’s gates. “There’s a dragon outside!"

Jon grins, and rises lazily to his feet. “That must be Rhaegal. He follows me around sometimes.” He looks down at the frightened little maid, patting her shoulder as he leaves the room. “You’re perfectly safe,” he assures her, before sauntering out, as the maid goes moon-eyed with adoration, the blithering _idiot._

Sansa closes her eyes and breathes deeply, and remembers one is not allowed to kill Targaryen princes, no matter how infuriating they are.

 


	5. davos

“She’ll have to marry, one of these days,” Ser Davos comments. They’ve just finished taking inventory of the armory, and the smithy, and it seems Sansa has been doing the same with the granaries. There is a pinched, worrying look about her, and Jon wonders if they’ll have to begin rationing again, if they might have to speak to Highgarden for provisions to last the rest of winter. 

“She’s sacrificed enough,” Jon mutters shortly. “She doesn't _have_ to do anythin’."

“Don’t mean offense, y'grace,” Davos replies genially. “But there needs to be an heir, and soon. The smallfolk love her, but summer will be upon us soon, and they might grow resentful eventually. No one wants to be dragged into another war over the succession."

“There’s Arya,” Jon replies irritably. “She and her bloody blacksmith."

Davos chuckles. “Aye, but she’ll never marry him - and their children, if they’re blessed with them, will be legitimized Baratheons, not Starks.” 

Jon glares at him. “What do you mean, she’ll _never_ marry him? My sister’s not going to have _bastards!"_

Davos shrugs. “Princess Arya doesn’t want to marry. If Winterfell has a legitimate heir to the throne, it will be from the Queen… Or not at all."

 

* * *

‘Hi,’ comes a tentative, shy warg brushing at the sides of Nymeria's mind, pushing the thoughts of a very fat little squirrel far away.

Nymeria lolls out her tongue, bright pink against the grey of her muzzle. ‘Hello, Ghost,’ she thinks back.

‘Wanna see a snake?'

Nymeria huffs. ‘I see snakes everyday, Ghost.'

‘This is a big snake, though,’ Ghost wheedles, and Nymeria huffs. Little brothers are tiresome. 

‘I see very big snakes too, Ghost,’ she sneer-thinks at him, sniffing through the underbrush for the squirrel again. Such a fat little squirrel, by the gods. Such a fat, wobbly little squirrel. Squirrels are the fucking best.

‘Not this big, you don’t,’ Ghost crows at her. 

Nymeria performs the canine, telepathic equivalent of rolling her eyes, as Ghost peppers her mind with images of the Old Stone Home, with men hitting each other with long, cold sticks and women scurrying about pink-faced and giggling. ‘See?’ he finally smarms at her when he reaches the gates, ‘his name is Rhaegal.'

And the image of the giantest, goddamn, fire-breathing lizard fills every corner of her brain, as she sits down on her butt with a hard thump. That- _that-_ Ghost was _right_. That really _**is**_ the biggest fucking snake.

She hates it when’s he’s right.

 

* * *

“So,” Podrick says, after they’ve returned from practicing with Jaime and Brienne. “Dragons."

Jon sighs. “Rhaegal's safe.” Honestly, Jon knows they’re all bloody tetchy about him having rode off to the capitol with Dany, instead of mooning pathetically over Sansa - which, if he's being brutally honest, is what he'd have ended up doing, if he'd stayed; it's what he's doing now, as embarrassing as that it - but he had sworn an oath to the queen. Do they now think he’s going to bring home a feral, murderous beast without knowing it won’t harm his people? 

"Safe-ish,” Jon mutters. “Well, he mostly won’t eat anyone."

The little squire aggressively tugs off his boot. “Oh, I’m not worried about that,” Pod remarks brightly.  
_Really?_ Jon wants to snipe. _You’re not? Because you should be. He'll eat you if I **tell** him to._  

“I was wondering," Podrick continues, relentlessly bloody cheerful, "There any way I can get one o' my own?"

"What - a dragon?"

Pod nods so hard, it's a wonder his skull doesn't roll right off his neck, the suicidal idiot. Jon daydreams about shipping the kid off to Valyria. Permanently.

No one should ever be _this_ cheery. There ought to be _**laws**_ , goddammit.


	6. gendry

"Ser Davos says you're planning to marry."

Sansa sighs, rubbing her eyes. The night's grown dark, and her solar is lit by nearly a hundred candles. She rolls her shoulders, blinking blearily, and the fabric of her gown pulls tightly across her chest for a brief moment, the swell of her breasts pushed above the deeply rounded neckline. She watches Jon's gaze flicker down before he hurriedly looks away, ears turning red.

_What, in the name of...  
... **does** he?_

Sansa gives herself a mental shake. She _can't_ do this, not again. The last time she chased after a prince, her father was _beheaded_ , her brother was  _butchered_ , her sister was _lost_ , _her mother was **slaughtered-**_

 _Stop it,_ she hisses angrily to herself. _Don't do this again._

" _Ser Davos_ is planning for me to marry," Sansa says wearily. " _ **I**_ am not."

"You'll have to, though, won't you?"  
Sansa holds back a sigh. _What does he care?_

"My marriage isn't anybody's concern, at the moment, Jon. Shut up about it, won't you?"

Jon grins at her easy, comfortable drawl. She's only sweet until you get to know her - and then she's a spitfire. _What a girl,_ he thinks, rocking back on his heels, locking his hands around his swordbelt, so he won't reach out for her. Won’t soothe the strain from her eyes, won’t run his fingers through her hair, won’t tug open the laces of her gown, won’t kiss her until she’s _begging_ for more-

"You've been looking at the Northern lords,” Jon says, shortly. "I know you have."

She arches a ruddy brow at him, gesturing for him to sit across from her, before she pours them both generous cups of sweet, sharp Arbor gold. "Am I so predictable, then?"

"No," he soothes, sipping the wine slowly, watching the tension drain out of her shoulders as she leans towards him across the narrow table, her chin cupped in her palm. "Just well-prepared," he says. Her other hand rests, facing down, on the table, a thin scar running down from wrist to knuckle. He hasn't seen it before.

Jon frowns, putting his cup down, taking her hand in his, rubbing the ridge of the scar with his thumb. Her hand is cool, soft under his heavy callouses, small enough to be eclipsed by his. It's innocent, the way they're touching now, holding hands across a table, fine wine turning the seconds long and molten. He looks up at her, absently stroking the warm, silken skin under his thumb, watching the shallow rise and fall of her chest, each breath pressing the soft, creamy curve of her cleavage against the gown. Her lips are parted, just a little, pink and full and soft. His eyes meet hers, shadowed in the flickering fire, black swallowing all that bright, Tully blue. Something like fear glints in her eyes.

 _Gods,_ of _course_ she's afraid; the things that _happened_ to her, here, in these halls- She- Sansa- And here he is, one more man to paw at her and want her in his bed, want her naked and _filthy_ and wanton-

 _Seven bleeding hells._  
He nearly kicks his chair back, in his haste. “Sorry,” Jon thinks he might’ve said, eyes wide like he’s sighted a horde of walkers charging at his doorstep. “I need to- There’s something- _Sorry_.”

The door to Sansa’s solar slams behind him as he leaves.

* * *

 

“You’re going to scare away the little ones."

Jon looks up from the forge’s cooling racks, scowling at Gendry _fucking_ Baratheon. “What?” he snaps, as Ghost lopes over to the smith. He’s huge now, a proper direwolf, his muzzle reaching Gendry’s chest, and he happily slobbers all over the other man, paws on his shoulders and licking his face. _Traitor_ , Jon thinks darkly.

Gendry stumbles back laughing, shoving Ghost away, and rubbing him behind his ears, and Ghost tries to wind himself around Gendry’s knees with very little success.

Ghost still thinks he’s tiny, the enormous, fucking idiot.

“Heel, boy,” Jon calls out, and Ghost promptly sets him rump down, tail thumping and tongue lolling out, staring at Gendry with waspish adoration.

_This is what he gets, for adopting a dragon, isn’t it? His sister’s… fellow steals the damn dog._

“I’m serious, your grace,” Gendry remarks, making his way to the furnaces at the back. “That scowl on your face - blacker than the long night, it is. If you scare away the little ones, Arya'll take it out on me, and I've got enough bruises to last seven lifetimes."

"Scare _whom_ away?"

"Oh, all the little ladies the Northern Lords send to her."

" _Send_ to her? To do **_what?_** "

"She and Brienne - they train them. They're very good, the students are. Frightening good." Gendry tests a new sword's tang against the anvil, before turning to him, as a long strip of silver turns molten orange in the forge behind. "You're lucky, you know," he says, a little grin curling up the side of his mouth, blue eyes sparkling with good humor. "At least the lady you fell in love with can't murder you in your sleep if you get her mad."

"Sansa could murder me in broad, summer daylight," Jon drawls back, as Ghost pads up to him, shoving his wet nose into Jon's armpit, tail wagging like a metronome, "and not a man in the North would stop her."

Gendry bursts out laughing, drawing out the molten silver and quenching it, steam hissing in violent spurts. "So you **_are_** in love with the Queen," he murmurs, arching a brow as color rushes up Jon's neck. _Shit_.

"Well, that's good, I s'pose. If you can admit it to yourself," Gendry says prosaically, "maybe you can find the balls to tell her grace too, aye?"

Jon scowls and looks away, fingers digging into Ghost's ruff, who whines contentedly into his side, his warm body plastered to Jon's.

Arya has _terrible_ taste in men.


	7. brienne

“You should dance with her."

Jon looks up at Brienne, who is in her full uniform today, silver armor and grey cloak, direwolf emblazoned upon her shield, and Oathkeeper at her hip. The silver-grey band edging her cloak proclaims her rank - Captain of the Queensguard. “I’m not sure she’d appreciate my cutting in, my lady,” Jon replies, tired to his bones. There’s an answering glitter of amusement in her pale eyes, a mirror of Jaime Lannister’s from his post across the room.

Around them, the feast is in full swing, the rebuilt Great Hall echoing with laughter and music and life, like it had once before, when they all had been young, naive. Unscarred.

He should dance with Sansa, he knows. He's the guest of honor, she's the Queen in the North; if they don't, it'll be remarked upon later, and Westeros and Winterfell have never needed stability and peace more.

Jaime Lannister is in armor too, catching Brienne’s eye and flashing her a smile that very nearly makes her blush. There's something achingly sweet about them; two lovers in matching armor, bound by honor to a young, beautiful Northern Queen.

And she is beautiful, Jon thinks bitterly, throwing back his ale and wishing it was something stronger. Something he could get sotted right off his head on, strong enough to eclipse the image of her, in a midnight blue dress, the cut Northern all the way through.

Except for the neckline. The neckline is southron with a vengeance, slashing open down between her breasts, tightly over their soft curves, and dipping down nearly until her navel. Rickard Karhold has not looked up at her eyes once, since they started dancing, not once, but _Rickard fucking Karhold_ is golden-haired and grey-eyed and tall and handsome, and it seems Queen Sansa doesn’t mind being ogled by the loutish _arsehole_ at all.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Brienne remarks casually. “It’s either you cut in, or I cut Lord Karhold's eyes out.” Jon chokes on his ale, and Brienne allows herself a very quiet, very quick grin. “And only one of those things,” she continues blithely, “won’t start a war.”

Jon looks up at her, finally, new appreciation in his eyes. “Go on, your grace,” she nudges softly. “Dance with your girl.”

The prince finally rises from his seat at the dais, setting his mug down. “I’m not sure if I’ve ever said this,” Jon says quietly, laughter crinkling up his eyes, “but Jaime Lannister has excellent taste in companions."

“Well,” Brienne remarks pertly, “his taste has certainly improved _now_.” And when Jon Snow explodes in quiet laughter, shoulders shaking with mirth, she catches Jaime’s eye, and smiles at him, full of heat and promise and love, and savours the way his eyes widen, the tips of his ears turning red.

It’s quite nice, she reflects to herself, having a knight of your own. The songs got that part right after all.

* * *

 

 

"How come you're still called Prince?"

Jon spins Sansa, before drawing her back into his arms, one hand on the small of her back, as the music draws to a close.

"I relinquished my claim to the throne. But I am still her heir."  
Sansa frowns, stepping back and curtseying at the end of the dance, before slipping her arm through his and guiding him to a quiet alcove off the south exit of the Hall. "You are?"

Jon nods, mutely, watching her step into the alcove next to him, her face half cast in shadow, half in moonlight, her eyes impossibly blue.

"So," she says, a little notch in her brow, "your children will be..."  
"Heirs to the Iron Throne," he confirms, ice trickling down his spine. He hates thinking about that - about his children being raised so far from the North, from the Stark lands, from the Old Gods and the magic of the Children.

Sansa sighs quietly, the warm breath fanning against his collarbone.

“My children will be princes, princesses," she whispers, her voice aching with sadness. “Yours too. Kings and queens."

"Isn't that what you always wanted?" He remembers that girl too, the one from his childhood, with her Southron graces and airs, her insistence at calling Jon her _half_ -brother, as if to clear her own name from the taint of being related to a bastard. It had stung, when he'd been a boy. The echo of that hurt is muted now, after the trials and the horrors they've faced together... But Jon remembers that girl. She'd wanted to marry a prince.

Sansa shakes her head, looking away from him, hands twisting together wretchedly. "No," she confesses. "Not any more. The throne is lonely, and cold. Now, I'd just like for my children to be..."

"Happy," he completes for her. She looks up at him, eyes burning like twin flames, a slow, wondering smile lighting up her lips. "Safe," he continues, thinking of the children he's sometimes imagined having, embarrassing, indulgent daydreams of burbling laughter and sticky fingers and sloppy kisses. Of someone who'd call him Father. Rather a lot of little someones. In his mind, they have blue eyes.

" _Yes_ ," Sansa whispers, nodding, her smile lighting up her face. She's _beautiful_ , so beautiful, so... So out of reach. "Happy, safe. Beloved."

She steps closer to him, eyes averted. Sansa rises on her toes, presses a feather-light kiss to his jaw, the imprint of her lips burning hot, the warmth of her body pressed along his chest for a brief instant, a brand across his mind.

"I'm glad you came home, Jon," she whispers, before ducking out of the alcove and back to the clamor of the feast. Her words feel like salvation. 


	8. daenerys

The dreams come more often now. Jon thinks it must have something to do with the North itself, with the air, cold and sharp, clearing away the cobwebs of his mind. Sometimes he is Ghost, paws hitting the ground with Nymeria's in tandem, racing through the underbrush in silent, perfect symphony, keeping time with the rapid, thumping beat of his heart. Sometimes he is Rhaegal, and these times, his dreams take on a painful, crystalline quality, images and sounds and smells clashing and resonating, until he wakes up gasping, the side of his mouth bitten clean through, blood pooling coppery hot on his tongue.

But those aren't the worst. The worst dreams are about **_her_** , about the laugh he remembers from before, the sea-blue of her eyes, the sly, upward curve of her lips when she was about to win an argument. He imagines that laugh against his skin, the warmth of her hands against his body, the way she might smile, arch and victorious, before dropping to her knees, and wrapping her pink, soft lips around his cock, her hair like a river of fire, humming around him, letting him fuck her, use her, spend dry inside of her, _gods_ \- There’s nothing honorable, about the way he wants her, nothing _good_ or _kind_ or gentle, the way he’d wanted Daenerys once.

With Sansa, he is his worst self, his darkest, ugliest desires rising like bile in his throat- He wants her to plead for him. He wants her cunt slick around his cock, her hands imprisoned in his wrists, the pale, desperate arch of her throat, marks from her nails rising bloody across his back. He wants her beyond reason. Beyond words.

* * *

 

 

"You looked beautiful, tonight. Did I- Did I mention that?"

Sansa smiles, and Jon sees it reflected in her looking glass, as she unbraids her hair slowly, methodically. She must do this every night, he thinks idly, a low ache settling just beneath his heart; she must brush her heart out and unlace her dark, Nothern gowns, and tamp out the candles burning in her bedchamber before tucking herself beneath the furs.

Is it lonely, for her? Here, in this enormous bed, in this dark, empty wing of the castle that once rang with her siblings' laughter?

Or is it a relief? After Joffrey, after Ramsay, after Petyr... It must be. After all, the Queen has no lack for suitors - but she doesn't look at any of them twice.

When their gaze meets again, she's staring at him, curious and soft-eyed. In the golden light of the room, her eyes are achingly blue.

"You didn't," she says, quietly, replying to his question. "But thank you. I'm glad you liked the gown."

Jon smiles wryly. "It wasn't the gown," he remarks. She used to be better at taking a compliment, when she was younger. He misses that about her. She ought to take compliments for granted; she ought to accept them as her due. She deserves every good thing the world has to offer, and she's received so little of it, so very, very little. "It was you. You were beautiful, tonight."

Sansa ducks, and Jon watches pink stain her cheeks. The stool scrapes against the flagstoned floor, as she pushes it back and rises, turning to him, hair tumbling down, eyes glittering. She smiles, a crooked, endearing little half-smile. "Thank you," she says quietly.

Jon shrugs, suddenly uncomfortable with the weight of her regard. He must've drunk too much ale after all, because the floor seems uneven beneath his feet, and he slumps against a bedpost, crossing his arms over his chest. "You're always beautiful," he admits, more gruffly than he ought to, as if the confession is something forbidden, something dark and occult, something that needs to be hidden away.

With the way he thinks about her... _Gods_ , maybe it ought to be.

But she walks up to him, until they are only inches away. She's tall, nearly his height, and although she could look up at him, her eyes slip to his mouth. "Do you think so?" she asks.

"Always," he replies, so soft, afraid of breaking this moment. "Always, Sansa." His hand rises without volition, fingers drifting along the sharp point of her cheekbones, the curve of her ear, the edge of her jaw. The corner of her parted lips. "You're the prettiest thing I've ever seen."

She drags an unsteady breath, and steps closer. When her mouth presses against his, hot, open-mouthed, her tongue slipping past his lips in soft, eager abandon, she tastes like lemoncakes and lavender wine.

She is sweet, so sweet, hands tangling at the back of his neck, a high, surprised laugh escaping her throat when he picks up her up, tugging her legs to wrap around his waist, holding her up against the bed post, devouring her sweet, perfect mouth.

He grinds against her gracelessly, without expertise, without sense. He's wanted her for long, so long he can't remember when he last looked at her and didn't think, ' _Gods, please. Her, just her._ '

It's a simmering, a spark that's burned into a forest fire, and he's a little rough, he knows, ruthlessly tugging the bodice open, biting her lips with each bruising kiss. But she doesn't seem to mind at all, by the way she clutches him to her breast, arching her back for his teeth on her nipples, his tongue soothing the sharp bite away. She's saying something, something like _yes_ and _please_ and _oh, Jon, Jon,_ his name repeated over and over, like litany, like prayer.

He cups her face between his hands, laying kiss upon kiss against her mouth, soft and open, sipping at her like Arbor gold. Her eyes flutter open, shining, crinkled up with a wondering smile, and she runs her fingers through his hair, gentle and possessive, legs tightening around his hips when he picks her up, and lays her down on the bed, crawling up her body, dropping kisses up her sternum, in the hollow at the base of her throat, the line of her jaw.

"Will you stay?" she asks him, and he hears the question she won't ask yet. _Do you love me?_

"As long as you want me, your grace." _I love you more than I knew I could._

Her breath shudders out, eyes dropping to his mouth, tracing the lush curve of his mouth with a wandering finger, resting her thumb on the soft give of his bottom lip. "I want you here for good." _I love you. I love you too._

He presses his mouth to the center of her palm. "Then I'll stay, Sansa."

_You are my home. You're the only home I know._

* * *

 

 

"If there's nothing else, I think we're done for the day."

Lord Varys cleared his throat gently, and the members of the Small Council turned to him. "Yes?" Dany asked.

"A raven, your grace. From Winterfell," and Varys watched as a huge, self-satisfied grin split the young queen's face.

"Finally," she muttered good-naturedly, gesturing impatiently for the scroll.

"As I expected," she murmured.

"Well?" Lord Tyrion demanded. "What? Or are we all supposed to perish of suspense here?"

Dany arched an imperious brow at her Hand, who rolled his eyes. _Impertinent idiot_. "The succession to the Throne is secure," she announced grandly to the Council at large. "My nephew will be taking a wife," and she watched with open glee as Tyrion blanched.

" _No_... He didn't."  
She nodded happily, smirking. "Oh yes he did. He's marrying the Queen. And you owe fifty dragons, Lannister."

"Sansa? He's- really? Sansa?"  
"Mm-hm. I told you I'd win our little bet. Jon is _painfully_ obvious when he's in love." She cocked her head at him, a feline little smile curving her lips. "Why do you think I let him go so far North to begin with?"

"Because he's your family?" Tyrion demanded dryly. "Because you care for him?"

"Oh, la, love," Daenerys waved off. "I need someone _**able**_ to succeed me. And a child from Jon Targaryen and Sansa Stark..." She shivered happily. "I couldn't imagine anyone better."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Hope you liked it! If you did, remember to hit kudos <3  
> Blanket Permission: go ahead and translate, make podfic, rework the fic, or do whatever other transformative work you can think of. If the work is hosted on another site, drop me a comment or email and I'll put a link in the story notes!  
> Find me on tumblr @dropofrum.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] all i've done](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12753333) by [BabelGhoti (TheHandmadeTale)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHandmadeTale/pseuds/BabelGhoti)




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